NYWA Hosts the Equal Pay Coalition at Hunter
Issue date: 11/26/08 Section: News
Donna Pedro, a Diversity and Compensation Expert who works as the Senior Partner and Chief Diversity Officer for Ogilvy and Mather, further described the situation. She sees many glass ceiling audits in her company. "Companies do not like to talk about this because there is a guilt associated with it." Indeed, women only earn less because their employers are paying them less.
This problem of communication, however, is not completely unfounded, according to Hinojosa, who pointed out that our new progressive presidency comes at a time when our nation is in a poor economic state. "There are going to be job losses across the horizon, and now you want women to start agitating [their employers]?" This necessity of economic survival, she said, prevents many women from speaking up.
The only male on the panel, Edward Ott, the Executive Director of the NYC Central Labor Council (a chartered body of the AFL-CIO, which represents over 1.3 million working men and women from over 400 NYC labor organizations), asserted that this is actually a great time to act. "When all the businesses are waiting on line at the Federal Reserve, this is the time for reregulation. This is the time to restructure our economy."
Still, Pedro acknowledged that "a lot of people will not speak up…we say it's Barack Obama, but it is [actually] all of us. It is all our responsibility."
Ledbetter is a perfect example of a brave woman who took a stance. Besides foregoing economic survival, it is not an easy subject to bring up because of the social circumstances. Before making the decision to sue Goodyear, Ledbetter said that her neighbors told her, "Well, you should never have been in that male environment." But Ledbetter persisted, understanding that Goodyear, which is a government contractor, still had to follow all federal guidelines, including the Equal Pay Act.
Though she lost her case, she still won without winning because of all the outrage it created. It was a perfect catalyst for the equal pay coalition.
This problem of communication, however, is not completely unfounded, according to Hinojosa, who pointed out that our new progressive presidency comes at a time when our nation is in a poor economic state. "There are going to be job losses across the horizon, and now you want women to start agitating [their employers]?" This necessity of economic survival, she said, prevents many women from speaking up.
The only male on the panel, Edward Ott, the Executive Director of the NYC Central Labor Council (a chartered body of the AFL-CIO, which represents over 1.3 million working men and women from over 400 NYC labor organizations), asserted that this is actually a great time to act. "When all the businesses are waiting on line at the Federal Reserve, this is the time for reregulation. This is the time to restructure our economy."
Still, Pedro acknowledged that "a lot of people will not speak up…we say it's Barack Obama, but it is [actually] all of us. It is all our responsibility."
Ledbetter is a perfect example of a brave woman who took a stance. Besides foregoing economic survival, it is not an easy subject to bring up because of the social circumstances. Before making the decision to sue Goodyear, Ledbetter said that her neighbors told her, "Well, you should never have been in that male environment." But Ledbetter persisted, understanding that Goodyear, which is a government contractor, still had to follow all federal guidelines, including the Equal Pay Act.
Though she lost her case, she still won without winning because of all the outrage it created. It was a perfect catalyst for the equal pay coalition.
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